


Try to kill it all away, But I remember everything

by JustWaitAndSee



Series: My Empire of Dirt [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Half-Mexican Jesse McCree, M/M, Mentions of casual racism in America, Not Canon Compliant, Relationships are background and secondary, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 10:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17282531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustWaitAndSee/pseuds/JustWaitAndSee
Summary: Jesse McCree is war-torn, living his second life, and just trying to do his best.Jesse McCree is a lie that's been told so many times that no one can find the grave of who he used to be.Jesse McCree is someone. Tired, anxious, and frustrated.Joel Morricone Junior is dirt.Joel Morricone Junior is nothing.Or:Jesse's past is a mystery shrouded in sand and dirt and he'd like it to stay there, but the desert calls him home. The only problem is that Hanzo and Gabe follow him there. On the way, they dig up the boy who hungered for freedom so much that he sold his soul to the desert.(Could standalone if you want to read McCree backstory and power lore, but should read If I Could Start Again first)





	Try to kill it all away, But I remember everything

Jesse stands on the bridge right after the bend the train takes out of the factory. He grips his backpack and traces a single pocket of space on the top of the machine. He’s heard the rumors about the people who try this. 

The rumble of the train is mocking him though. Every rolling beat a loud condescending, _You’ll die here._

_Fuck you,_ Jesse thinks, _Nothing can kill me._

As the roar increases, he takes a few deep breathes, bends his knees, and, for a second, he hangs in the air. 

For a second, he flies- sure of his success. 

He misses the pocket though. When his feet hit that roof, there’s barely a moment before he’s slipping off. Jesse tries to grasp at the silver surface, but he rolls, fingers trying to dig into nonexistent handholds. 

The snap of his arm is agonizing as he hits the ground body first. He rolls on to his back and tries to pull breath back into his lungs in large hungry gulps. The sting is quickly worsening where the rocks cut into his skin and skipping straight to excruciating where the bone has broken. Sure that he’s taking a chunk out of his lip, he bites down to stave off a scream. He can hear the pounding of feet, so he picks himself up, cradling his arm, and runs. Every step makes the stabbing pain pulse outward, blood trickling into his eyes from the gash on his forehead. When he crashes into the fence, letting out a pained cry, he tries to dig his only useable arm into the wire to pull himself up. 

Instead, a hand grabs a hold of him by his backpack and throws him back several feet. He screams as he hits the ground a second time, the force sending electricity radiating from his broken arm to every part of his body. 

_“What the hell do you think you’re doing, niño?”_

* * *

Jesse wakes up with shaking hands. The specter of pain crawling across his arm. 

With the amount of time and energy he was used to spending in the office and in the field, nightmares normally didn’t eat into his sleep.

The past year had been slow though. He’s spent way too many days lately working only nine to five, so he’s not surprised that the anxious energy is starting to seep into his bones and into his head. As is, it’s too close to the day Overwatch falls for him to be getting complacent, but these dreams are wearing his nerves thin.

Even though everything’s changed, he needs to be sure that nothing is going to ruin this life he stitched back together from the memories of his old one. 

With the frenzied energy under his skin quickly morphing into a gritting itch, he knows he has to check. He needs to know if he’s done everything he can, everything he needs to. 

So, he pulls on a pair of pants and his leather jacket from his travel bag and grabs his keys and wallet from the armoire. He bypasses his phone, leaving it plugged in by the bed. Walking out the bedroom door, he tucks his hat underneath his elbow and slips Peacekeeper into her holster, but he finds he can’t make the clean getaway he wants. 

Hanzo is sitting at the kitchen island, holding a steaming cup of tea close in his hands as if to stave off the late November chill that has crept into the house in the middle of the night. 

“Going somewhere?” The man asks quietly, knowing that any sound has the ability to wake every person in the house. 

“Uh yeah, just out for a drive.” 

Hanzo gets up with hands still wrapped around the mug, “I’ll come with you then.”

“I don’t… think that’s the best idea.”

Hanzo’s voice is completely calm, but unrelenting, “Jesse, it is time for us to talk about this.” 

He fixes his hat to his head and traces the rim so that the shadows of the dark kitchen fall heavy on his face and replies, “I don’t think that’s the best idea either.” 

He skims around where Hanzo is standing and heads out the door, refusing to meet his eyes.

As soon as he shuts himself into the car, he squeezes down on the leather of the wheel. Breathing long and deep bellied, he squeezes his eyes closed for a moment before his vision is taken by the sight of the blood red sun hanging in the eastern part of the night sky. 

The passenger door pulls open and Hanzo slides in. 

“Hanzo, get out of the car,” The words stumble out quickly. 

“No, we can either talk about us or you can tell me what you are doing out here.” 

Jesse doesn’t get angry easily, but with exhaustion infecting his entire being his words come out in a growl, “You’re being ridiculous.”

“No,” Hanzo says, face stony and unmoving, “You are. Something is wrong.”

“Oh, really, how would you know that? You know nothing about me.”

“Untrue.” 

A mocking edge creeps into his tone as he asks, “Where was I born?” 

In a cruel part of Jesse’s mind, he wants to see him struggle, so he watches Hanzo’s composure fall slightly in a quick downward twitch of his mouth. 

A tell he used to love about his counterpart. 

“Fine, tell me. Which of these fifty states were you born in?” 

Jesse lets out a huff through his nose, shaking his head, “None of ‘em.” 

“What?” 

It’s hard to shock Hanzo Shimada. The surprise in the man’s voice is enough to soften the edges of Jesse’s mood. A small victory that tells that maybe if he throws enough at Hanzo, he can get him out of the car and himself a state line away before the sun has fully risen. 

“I was born outside of Monterrey in Mexico. Can’t call it a town. It was just some apartments LuméirCo put up to keep workers near.” 

“I-“ The man turns his head away and in a smaller voice, he says, ”Thank you for sharing. I would like to know more.” 

Jesse deflates fully at the tone, discomfort and a feeling of dirtiness taking its place, “Look, Hanzo, I don’t know if I can do this.” 

“Then don’t,” He lifts his head to stare into Jesse’s eyes, “Jesse McCree, I don’t want what you cannot give, but we have worked together for almost five years and we will work together for longer. You cannot avoid me forever. As well, you cannot continue to play with my emotions. You need to be in or out.” 

Jesse knows the games that he’s been playing with Hanzo haven’t been fair.

Every time he wants to reach out, he grabs for the shadow of his old love, only to wrench away from any unfamiliar trait this new world has given Hanzo Shimada. 

“It’s hard, Hanzo. I loved you and I don’t know how that translates.” 

“I’m not asking if you love me. I’m asking if you and I- this version of me, not any other- could be together- could try- because Jesse I can see why I loved you. It’s very easy.”

Months of little sleep, years of jumping from one mistake to fix to another all seem to crash down on him in this moment.

Jesse is tired.

He tilts his head down and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want Hanzo to be two different people. He just wants-

_Forget about what’s already behind you_

The other man continues, “I find that I don’t care about my other self. Just as I wouldn’t care about past lovers. I don’t know how my counterpart would feel about our relationship, but I am here and he is not.” 

“I-“ He feels like the oxygen has been sucked out of his throat. “I need to think,” He rubs a hand across his face, letting the stumble burn his palm.

Jesse can feel the words hanging on the other’s tongue _You’ve had five years to think_ , but instead Hanzo pauses and changes the subject, “What is this drive is about?” 

“I need- I’m going- No-“ He breathes out, “The closer I am to the Chihuahuan Desert the more I see.” He lets the energy buzzing beneath his skin pull into his eyes. He hopes that Hanzo will understand as someone who also deals in spirits.

Hanzo stares deeply into his eyes which Jesse knows are glowing blood red, realization filling his own gaze. “That’s how you do it. It’s the desert-This desert-”

“It’s like twelve hours east of here.” 

He looks vaguely nauseous. 

Jesse’s never told anyone before, but Hanzo- he’s telling _this_ Hanzo, “Yeah, I-“ 

“Are you out of your mind? You made pact with a force of nature?” A panic is settling into his tone, “That’s why you’re so weak after your shots. It’s feeding off of you.” He makes a grab for his phone, “I still have some contacts who may be able to remove it before it kills you-”

His hand shoots out stopping the other’s movement. “Hanzo, the desert has had ample opportunity to see me dead. Stop worrying. I know what deal I made. Anyway, you have your dragons-“

“There is a difference,” He hisses out and Jesse thinks this might be the first time in two lifetimes he has seen fear written across his face, “Between family spirits and an entire land mass.” 

Jesse tries to think of a reply that will placate Hanzo, but the door to the backseat opens.

Gabe gets into the car wearing an old army sweater and sweat pants and he closes the door quickly to preserve the heat. Both men twist around in their seats to look at him. 

His voice is rough from sleep, “If the two of you are making out like teenagers in here, could you please turn the headlights off. They are pointing right into my room.” 

“Shit, sorry, Gabe,” Jesse says. 

“We are not kissing out here,” Hanzo replies as well, “Did Jesse ever tell you his abilities came from the spirit of a desert?” 

“Hanzo, please-“

“Ah, no-“

Hanzo cuts back in, “He is in the car in the middle of the night because he is going to meet it.”

Gabe looks back and forth between the two, mouth slightly open and tired eyes shifting the information. He finally seems to give up and just says, “What the fuck?”

Before Jesse can retake control of the conversation, Hanzo adds, “Nature spirits are known for killing their hosts especially large, powerful ones,” Jesse wants to know what lesson their father taught them that Genji and Hanzo know exactly when to pause for maximum dramatic effect, “Like deserts.” 

Gabe’s brain finally fully clicks on as the word ‘killing’ rips through the cobwebs caused by the early hour and the night chill. He looks straight at Jesse and, in a livid tone, questions, “What the fuck?” 

Jesse puts his hands up in surrender. 

“Look-“ He starts, but cuts himself off as he sees Gabe’s expression. 

His eyebrows have dropped from anger into something soft, but his eyes appear detached and glazed. Like he didn't know what he expected-like he's given up. Gabe seems to be looking for something in Jesse’s face as they stare each other down, but the older man doesn’t seem happy with what he’s seeing, mouth pinching into a line.

The disappointment radiating off Gabe feels like it’s slashing through Jesse’s chest. 

After a moment, Gabe crosses his arms and leans back into the seat, then demands, “Drive.” 

Jesse and Hanzo look to each other just confirm their confusion is not out of place.

Their questioning gazes don't faze Gabe for a second and he simply asks, “McCree, are you going to get out of the car?” 

“No,” Jesse admits a little reluctant, but truthful. 

“What about you, Shimada?” 

“No.”

“Then, I guess we are three idiots not getting out of the car. Jesse, drive.” 

He hesitates for a second, but only just, before he peels the car out of the driveway.

He watches Gabe settle into the seat behind Hanzo in the rear mirror and only puts his attention fully to the road when Gabe’s reflection glares straight at him. Hanzo's seatbelt is the last sound in the car as a tense silence quickly invades the air. 

A few minutes pass before Gabe kills it with frustration lacing every word, “You promised me you weren’t going to do this again.”

“Gabe, I-“ 

Gabe just shakes his head and leans it back on the headrest, ending the conversation before it truly begun. 

Hanzo speaks before the silence stiffens again to a point where they might spend the entire trip without a word, “So, when did you immigrate from Mexico?” 

Jesse presses his lips together. 

He tries to keep his eyes on the road and away from Gabe, but he hears what sounds like a strangled laugh from the backseat. He chances a glance, only to find the older man with a wide grin staring straight at the roof as though he could ask God, _Are you_ fucking _kidding me?_

Hanzo turns in his seat, “You did not know?” 

With a small huff, he replys, “No.” 

“I was around ten.” They both look straight at him, eyes hungry for more information. “Figured out the timing on those trains LumériCo has. First time it worked, I was halfway to the border before I turned around. When I got back, my mama said if I could get on those things that I better goddamn go.” 

“She just told you to leave?” Hanzo asks with that kind of hesitant concern that only comes out when people don’t want to tell you that your parents didn't really do a good job. 

“Hanzo, where I was from, it was hard. Mama was always at the factory, but there was no food.” He laughs around the words. “I couldn’t tell you if she told me to leave cause that’s what a good parent would do or because one less mouth to feed sounded pretty damn great after thinking about it.” 

Hanzo falters with the follow up, but presses on, “And your father?” 

Jesse starts really laughing, not at Hanzo, but at how he was trying to get away from his nightmares and get some clarity on where he was supposed to go from here.

Now though, with that goddamn look in Gabe’s eyes and hours to burn, he’s got to play this right, even if that means pulling the remains of his past out of the dirt like corpses in a cemetery. 

But this story would be enough to get Jesse exactly where he needed to be and wasn’t it time that someone heard it? 

_Don’t come back here,_ a stern voice mutters in his head. 

The words tumble out of his mouth in an attempt to get rid of the echo, “Gabe knew him.” 

The response is quick, “What?” 

He had to start this out right, “Didn’t choose New Mexico out of nowhere.”

The information settles in the car and Jesse peaks at Hanzo, letting himself smirks at the dazed look. The man didn’t know the type of shit Jesse was hiding was the type of shit he hadn’t even told Gabe. He probably thought these were the type of secrets that came out slowly from the ground. Peeling layer upon layer off until the full truth was finally revealed. That anyone who stuck around long enough would learn them. 

He wasn’t expecting this kind of secret. The kind that had no headstone. No mourners. Too deep for even the dogs to sniff out. 

“Tell me that your father is not who I think it is.” 

“Too smart for that kind of bullshit, Jefe,” He replies, eyes steady on the horizon. 

The low-toned rage is boiling deep in his voice, “Obviously not, when you’re the one spitting it.” 

Hanzo looks like he just realized that this was going to be a very, long car ride.

* * *

He’s sitting in a booth. 

For the first time in what seems like forever, his stomach is full and his throat doesn’t ache for water. The woman who had called his father, who spent the call switching between uncontrollable laughter and disbelief after hearing his name, left him with a small mound of quarters for the mini jukebox and a pitcher of water. 

He drags the pitcher closer before flipping through the cards with the dial.

Studying each age-worn paper, he tries to sound out the English words. The letters were familiar, but he can’t quite match them with the words he’s heard from the American TV shows that were on after school. He finally settles on a number so he can hear the singer coon out the name of the song and he can find out if he’s gotten the pronunciation right in his head. He slips a quarter into the machine and presses the button to get it started. As the old gears turn out a waspy sound, each quarter slowly slips into his pocket. Sipping his water, he tries to keep his expression innocent whenever he sees the waitress turn her eyes back over to him. 

A man wearing what looks like antique sunglasses irritates the bells, a clacking sound instead of a chime because of the power of the pull, as he opens the door. 

The waitress goes to meet him at the front, but his eyes catch on his table and he sees the man lick his teeth before pulling the glasses off to squint at him. He watches as the pair talks for a second, not really understanding the words they say, but there's no doubt in his mind that he’s the subject. 

Every step is deliberate and loud as the man saunters over. When he gets to the booth, he stands at the end making no move to slide into the other side. He holds those glasses loosely in one hand, leisurely leaning over the table balanced on his other.

When the man’s shadow fully encases him, he asks, “What’s your name, kid?” 

He knows enough of the language to understand the question, so he straightens his back and holds the man’s gaze and replies, “Joel Morricone Junior.” 

A smile breaks across the man’s face, he laughs just like the waitress did earlier. “Well, I’ll be. I’m going to tell you a secret. That’s my name too and ain’t you look just like me?”

* * *

“I’m going to fucking kill you.”

He keeps his eyes straight and his voice light, asking, “So, you don’t want to hear the rest?”

Gabe lets out an aggravated sound from the back of his throat. 

Jesse just responds with a small huff as he picks up again, “Yeah, so I met my father in the rinky-dink diner and he took me back to where the other kids were.” 

“That warehouse?” Gabe asks, voice low with a hint of disbelief mixed with disgust. 

“Yeah, it’s how we lived.” 

“I understand that you two have been there, but could you explain for me please.” 

“Ah ‘course, Hanzo. You see the Chihuahuan is a funny desert. You know the US military lost a bomb in there once. Wasn’t supposed to go there and hell did it take them months to find that thing.” The words spill out from behind his teeth that he couldn’t keep out of some weird kind of smile. “There’s zones, usually on the Mexican side of the border, but they move, and shit just stops working. It’s why no one lives smack dab in the middle. No communication.” 

Gabe adds in, “Well, no one, but a bunch of dirty gangsters who leave groups of kids out in the middle of the desert to take care of their shit.” 

“What?”

Jesse has spent this whole car ride holding back peculiar bursts of laughter, so he’s trying to pull air into his lungs as he lets words out at the same time hiccupping snickers skip out of his throat, “They-“ He takes a large sucking breath and he flinches away as Hanzo slowly tries to touch his shoulder. 

He holds out a hand in a stopping motion towards Hanzo, his eyes stuck on the road, and he swallows to try to control the erratic cycle of his airflow. 

“You ever been out in the desert with no food or water?” He keeps talking, not really looking for an answer, “You ever leave thirty kids out in the desert with no food or water?” 

“Jesse?” 

His fist comes off the steering wheel and his knuckles brush forcefully across his lips like he was trying to seal them with the motion.

His voice comes out quiet now, “You know if you just leave kids in a desert. Give them just a bit of food and water and tell them that you’ll be back in a week and to sort the drugs or there won’t be no food next week, you tend to get some fucking messed up people. But they’re loyal fuckers, you know?” 

He wipes the back of his hand against his mouth and shakes his head like he’s trying to throw off the memory, “You know it wasn’t so bad, I mean we- we had those old westerns I like. It’s where I learned most of my English.” His voice drops to almost a whisper, “And it was quiet out there. Real quiet.” 

He can almost feel the pounding in his skull that haunted him the first six months he had been allowed to live outside the desert. 

He doesn’t turn his head, but he can hear the confusion when Hanzo asks, “Why didn’t you just leave?”

The question comes out like he couldn’t quite believe that Jesse was ever unskilled enough to not be able to get out of a situation he didn’t want to be in. He wonders if Hanzo used to ask himself that as well before he had killed off the main branch of the Shimada clan or if the idea to leave had come as suddenly as he had done it. 

“You can’t just walk through a desert Hanzo with nothing. Not when you don’t know where the fuck you are. And- I mean- you had something to look forward to. The teenagers would come barreling in every once in a while and they’d tell you about the real world. About cars and shooting people like in the movies. And you’d just know that one day,” He bits harshly into his bottom lip, “One day, that’d be you. You’d get to live in the real world and Deadlock would take care of you.” 

Jesse just leaves the information hanging in the car. He knows he’s being cruel. 

To Gabe and Hanzo. 

And to himself. 

But with the bloody red sun blocking out the rising dawn from his vision, he thinks, _I just want someone to know it all happened._

He wonders how much of this Gabe actually knew. Though, he can’t find it in himself to do more than wonder. 

“So, I realized how fucking stupid I was when I was fourteen….”

* * *

Usually, he looks forward to the days his father comes to get him. 

Today, his body hurts. His eye is partly swollen and he has yellowing bruises outlining the cuts he received after a slightly bigger kid slugged him. 

He would really rather be hidden in the rafters of the warehouse sleeping like he has been for the last three days. But days with his dad are far and few between. They’re nice though. His dad treats him to a few meals, takes him out in whatever car he has that week, and he gets to just breath for a few hours. 

Even covered in bruises though, he’s loading cargo into the back of the truck. 

The crate he’s holding makes a nice thump as he puts it into the bed and his dad hears it from where he’s lounging. He turns his head to shout over, “Junior, that truck is new and costs more than your life. You better be goddamn careful.” 

“It’s all good, Pop. No scratches or nothing,” He says over his shoulder. 

As he makes his way over to grab the next box, he hears the older man start to come towards him. He gives up on the crates and turns his head to give his father his full attention. The man has begun to saunter over, pausing for a second to rip a bottle of water out of the pack they had just got from the store. He holds back a grimace. 

_He bought it- he can take as many as he wants,_ His mind tries to bargain with his temper. Not for the first time, he’s trying to hold his tongue towards his father, but this is the first time he feels it stick. He can’t quite wipe off the irritation that’s warming over his sore body. 

The man strokes a hand across the car before he leans against it and says, “Junior, you gotta take care of the things you own. Especially, the things you work for.” He wags the water bottle in his hand at him and then tapping the top lightly on the side of the car a few times. “I worked for everything I have. I hungered for it. You gotta be hungry, Junior, you get me?” 

“Yes, sir,” he says because he does, he’s heard this speech before. The repetition grates against his skin in a familiar way adding sparks to the heat that’s already there. He licks at his lips. 

“You gotta know what it is to be hungry, Junior. That’s why I leave you with those losers. You gotta know how to live with nothing because-” He takes a moment to hold his attention and crack open the seal of the water bottle before he continues, “-Sometimes, Junior, the dirt is all you got.” 

He’s nodding along, but, really, he’s trying to hold himself back from rolling his eyes.

What did his father know about dirt? He was only as dirty as he wanted to be. 

Even with the layer of today’s desert dust, his clothes smelled fresh and the tracks of clay on the side of the truck had barely begun to bake onto the paint. 

That truck had been washed more times this month than he had. 

His father take a long sip of the water, before he spits in out in the dirt. “This is shit-ass tasting water,” he says and, with a flick of his wrist, the contents are splattered across the ground. 

The annoyed feeling that had been bubbling inside his chest vanishes as he watches the water soak into the ground. 

It feels like its extinguishing any feeling in his body for a moment. 

In the next, the sore irritation has kindled into an inferno. 

_I’m always hungry,_ He wants to snap, _I’ve always been hungry. I don’t think I remember anything else._

He’s hungry now for something different though. He’s hungry to knock that look off his father’s face. 

Only the spare thought of the foot of height his father has on him and the guns strapped to his hips keeps him alive. He forces himself to turn back towards the boxes and keep moving. 

With the sand gritting under his boots, he thinks he hears a whispered promise, _Don’t worry. I’ll eat him one day soon._

* * *

Junior has been a gun for seven months. His fifteenth birthday had come and so had his father. He had picked him up from the warehouse, threw him a leather jacket, and told him it was time to go. 

He misses the warehouse in between the moments of hating its existence. 

The newer kids- the younger kids who replaced the people who grew useful enough- didn’t give him a hard time. It was nice for a moment to live in a place where no one sneered “Junior” or “Baby Boy” at him. 

A place where he seemed to have his own identify, unrelated to his father’s, for just one moment. 

Instead, Ashe hits his shoulder and says, “Baby Boy, hurry the fuck up.” 

“Stop fucking calling me that,” he replies, but shoots out the tires of the Jeep trying to follow them away from their last hit. 

“Ooooh, finally learn some English, Baby Boy. Couldn’t be sure you knew how to speak at all the last time I saw you.” 

“Don’t need to talk much when there’s that much stupid coming out of your mouth, Ashe.” 

“Dang, that might have hurt if I was twelve.” 

He grits teeth, checking the dimly lit street behind them for any tails as they turn off the asphalt into unkept dirt road. 

He hates her. Hates them all really. If he was allowed to speak Spanish, he could have taken her apart. 

English, though, just made him feel stupid and slow. 

It was better now than when he was ten, but silence was still his closest friend. His slow drawl, copied from old Westerns, and the suspenseful time he took to respond to questions were mechanisms he used to have time to translate through the fast-paced English around him. Over the years, he found responding with a raised eyebrow made him out as cool and calm instead of an idiot stumbling over proper English tenses. 

He hates English. He hates Ashe. He hates Deadlock. 

He hates how he misses how quiet the warehouse was compared to the cities they’ve been running games through. 

He hates his father and he hates himself. 

He hates himself for being too stupid to get out of this. 

For getting himself into this in the first place. 

For being a damn bobblehead for years as his father came around. 

For having nothing. Not even a name of his own. 

When they pull into the warehouse to drop the goods, he waves to a couple kids he taught how to shoot, but makes his way straight to his father who is whispering quickly back and forth with Ashe’s mother.

Once he’s in grabbing distance, his father pushes his chin back until he’s looking down straight into his eyes, searching for something.

Joel clicks his tongue unsatisfied and lets him go, “Well, Plan B then, huh?” 

Deadlock’s leader just looks straight at both of them for a moment before turning away to go see the new loot. 

“What’s going on?” He asks. 

His father looks him over before replying, “Nothing. We just have to be up early tomorrow. I’ve got something to show you.” 

Narrowing his eyes, he follows his father into the dark desert. Stepping out of the warehouse feels like stepping into another world. The circle of light that comes out of the windows seems like the only thing holding back whatever power the gray shades of sand claim at night. 

One foot out of that circle, a step behind his father, and Junior can hear it whisper in his ear, _I’ll eat him. Soon, I’ll eat him for you, Jesse._

As a shiver runs down his back, he hopes he hasn’t pissed off whoever Jesse is.

* * *

The morning rolls in fast and Junior finds himself trying to keep his eyes open in the passenger seat. He doesn’t know where they’re going. He thought when they turned into the desert they would be heading to the warehouse to grab supplies to transport, but he couldn’t find any of the landmarks he associates with the usual route. 

It just seems to Junior that they are driving straight into the desert. 

When they finally stop, the radio has been out for a good four hours, he is starving for lunch, and his father has flat out refused to answer any questions three times. The sand crunches audibly as he jumps onto the ground happy to stretch his legs out. Besides the truck’s tracks gouged into the sand, the landscape looks completely untouched. It doesn’t seem like anyone has ever been out here. 

Following his father, he walks until they are surrounded by the desert’s low foliage. “This,” he motions around them, “This is everything.”

He can’t even find it in him to make any impressed sounds. They aren’t even looking at a nice part of the desert. The only things surrounding them are rocky, gray sand and ugly, pointed shrubs. 

“Okay,” He drawls out. 

“You don’t understand yet. You don’t feel it yet. But you will, Junior,” He wags a finger, “The desert is powerful and it gives and it takes. Death provides the nutrients that feed into the desert, so that it may provide life. We give to the desert, so that we may receive from it.” 

He tries to hold back rolling his eyes at his father’s rambling. The circular way he speaks is for his own amusement and, being the captive audience he was, meant he got to hear all the greatest hits on repeat. 

“So, you want me to feel the desert?” 

He watches as his father’s lips press together in a line before he replies, “Just remember: sometimes, all you got is the dirt, Junior.” He blows out a breath and turns around, “I’m going to refill the tank. Stay there and try to understand what I’m saying.” 

He peels his jacket off, turning in the opposite direction his father is walking. The sun is baking a comforting warmth into his skin, so he closes his eyes and enjoys the spreading heat. He tilts his head back and just breathes in the moment so he can at least say he gave it a shot. 

The desert dust works its way into his throat as he breathes deeply. He can hear the small movements of the grasses and the sound of his father capping the gas tank and replacing the extra jug. 

When he opens his eyes directly into the noon day sun above him, it’s dripping red. 

The sensations against his body change. The dust thickens in his throat and the heat morphs into a searing burn on his skin like holding a hand to the stovetop. 

He blinks. 

The sun is once again a stinging pale yellow in his vision and he sucks in a quick breath, before trying to dislodge the feeling of a lump in his throat with a series of choking coughs. 

He shakes his head and circles his shoulders to try to shake the heat that lingers under his skin. The remnants of the burn feel like they are still burrowing deep into him and he can’t quite tell if the sensation is horrible or comforting as he makes his way back to the truck. It feels like the first sips of hot chocolate on a cold night. Like the heat of the drink is exploding through his chest on the way down. Painful in a way that turns into relief. 

When he’s close enough to see his father in the driver’s seat, he feels the annoyance reappear. _Why did we come all the way out here just to turn back?_ He thinks. 

As the engine turns over, the points of heat in his body start to grow. His father looks straight at him with those antique sunglasses masking his eyes, but he knows. 

He knows what those eyes are saying. 

Without a second thought, he’s sprinting towards the car. 

His boots give off loud crunching sounds as they dig hard into the rocky sand, but before he’s even within ten feet of the truck, it turns and slips right back into the tracks they made on the way in. 

He skids to a halt right where the truck used to be parked and stands there with his leather jacket clenched in his hand, watching as the trail of dust shrinks on the horizon.

* * *

He’s a few hours into walking the tire tracks. 

There’s no time for hesitation when you’re trapped in the desert, so he had held out hope for his father for just a moment before he let it go and moved forward. By waiting around, all he was doing was giving the desert more and more time to wash away any chance he had of ever leaving. 

His anger is a constant low drum that accompanies his steps, a beat heavy with blood behind his eyes. He holds it with determination, a fury that will hopefully see his through this. 

He’s going to kill him. Throw bullet right into his head. 

His father’s condescending voice pushes into his mind, _You got a million problems ahead of you, forget about the million that are already behind._

He can almost see that smirk. A sharp breath comes out of his nose before he screams out, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” 

His rage burns a harsh ache into his throat as it spills out into the sand and all that is left behind is a cruel headache and painful tears held back by sheer will. 

His father had stolen every part of the life he lived and now he had taken his death too. 

_Nothing,_ he thought, _I’ve never had anything and I never will._

He lets his knees sink into a squat and finds a moment of relief from the sunburn that is already working into his face when he drops his head down. Closing his eyes, he tries to control the sobs, if nothing else then to hold on to as much water in his body as possible.

Eyes closed and body scrunched into a ball, he can feel the dirt and sand imbedding itself into his body. He can feel the heat from before spreading painfully beneath his skin. He scratches his nails across his arms to try and get some relief. His nails start to dig in-

_He’s standing on the bridge right after the bend the train takes out of the factory. He grips his backpack and traces a single pocket of space on the top of the machine. He’s heard the rumors about the people who try this._

_The rumble of the trains mocks him with every rolling beat,_ You’ll die here. __

__Fuck you, _Jesse thinks,_ Nothing can kill me.

-and his nails are sharper than he remembers. The pain surprises him enough that he falls on to his ass.

He can’t say that he’s shocked that it’s pitch black as he takes in his surroundings, but it doesn’t settle quite right in head. The small remnants of tracks he had been following are completely gone now. Any trace taken by desert. 

He pushes himself up to his feet, wipes the sand grains from his hands, and keeps walking with a single thought echoing in his head, _Fuck you, nothing can kill me._

* * *

As he walks, there’s sometimes a man next to him.

He’s Asian and taller than the fifteen-year-old. His eyes severe and his hair pulled back into a ribbon that sways with each step. 

He doesn’t question why the man is with him. Only glad that he is. 

He knows walking in silence with him is something he can do for forever and a day.

* * *

Sometimes he’s not in the desert at all, sometimes he’s half a step behind a large man. He feels larger than himself in these moments, but he feels safe and needed. 

He’s there to protect this man. This man is there to protect him. 

He keeps himself from smiling. He’s handcuffed to a table and the other man is tilted back in a metal chair. He’s trying to look scary, but he knows. 

He knows that this man will protect him. 

That he will protect this man. 

“So, you with me or not, hijo?” The man asks. 

He lets a smirk dance across his face, holding a full smile back as he replies in Spanish, “ _Of course, Jefe.”_

* * *

He’s alone when he finds the skeleton. The skin and muscles have long since been pulled off, the person was just waiting for the desert to turn them into the sand and dust that they were buried in. 

He takes the hat off the skull and straps the gun and its holster to his waist. He bows his head and tilts the hat to show his respect. 

He goes forward, an odd comfort making its way into his heart.

* * *

He’s sitting at a table, hat put to the side. His Jefe is sitting across from him, his presence large enough to fill the entire diner. 

“You know who I am, so tell me what’s your name, hijo?” 

It rolls off his tongue because he knows his name, “Jesse McCree.”

* * *

He’s got six bullets in the revolver. 

Peacekeeper is steady in his hand as he pushes open the door of the bar. As the frame connects with the wall and the resulting sound crashes through the room, the smokey space goes quiet, every eye on him, a steady clapping beat rumpling through the old speakers. 

He keeps his steps heavy and purposeful as he approaches the back table. 

Ashe leans against the bar, her omnic and Frankie flanking her. His Jefe is sitting within the line of sight of all of the exits, tensing further every second the atmosphere of the bar doesn’t reset to its previous flow. 

No one is going to stop Jesse. 

He straightens his arm towards his father. 

The man stands, a crooked grin pulling his face into something arrogant, “Ju-“

Jesse lets out a bullet. 

Hands rush for their own guns and half the room is trained on Jesse by the time Joel Morricone whips his hand out in a hold signal. A trail of blood leaks across his cheek. The hand not holding Deadlock back pulls through it and brings a bloody hand down to inspect. 

Joel meets his eyes and Jesse can see the same bloody crimson reflecting between them. 

Finally, he says, “If you call me that again, the next bullet will be between your eyes.” Turning around, his gaze stops on Jefe for a moment before he looks directly at Ashe. 

He holsters Peacekeeper. 

Moving towards the exit, the entire room continues to track him with guns and eyes. 

He’s in the parking lot, almost to the passenger side of the truck, when the locks click open. While the rest of the team takes a minute to join him, he climbs in and waits. Ashe slams the door closed and doesn’t speak as the engine turns over. 

Once she peels out of the lot, she spares him a glance, “You look like shit.” She pauses then adds, “You should have taken that shot when you had it.”

“Didn’t need to. Something worse is going to happen to him.” 

She clicks her tongue. 

Jesse knows she would do anything to get to take that kind of shot off at her mother. Ashe might have been cruel, but she was the devil he knew and goddamn did he know her. They were cut from the same cloth, reflections in every way down to every drop of hatred they had for their parents. 

“Hm, well, whatever, your choice.” She takes a second to really look at him as they sit at a red, “Happy birthday, I guess. It was last week.” 

“Thanks,” He replies. 

He didn’t really have any feelings about the realization that he had just spent five months in the desert. 

It hadn’t felt that long. 

It hadn’t felt that short. 

The fact just sat on his chest like he had always known the desert had taken five months. 

Didn’t matter. Jesse had work to do now.

* * *

Jefe’s name is Gabriel Reyes, but he’s going by Deven Reyes. Uncreative really. 

To be fair though, the last name is so common that there are four other Reyes. Not one of them is related. 

He’s an outskirts member. The way most people who weren’t raised in Catherine Ashe’s version of boarding school are. They aren’t left alone with loot, they don’t lead hits, and, most importantly, they don’t go to the warehouse. You see people who grow up in normal environments usually have some morals involving leaving starving kids in the middle of the desert, even the dredges of society Deadlock collects usually have at least a token protest in them. 

Jefe is looking for the warehouse. That’s why he’s undercover. There’s no case to be made without the stash of illegal goods and missing orphans, but Jesse knows how close he is to giving up. Overwatch works quickly and while this assignment probably sounded like a nice vacation for the commander at first, he can’t really pull off being away from his responsibilities much longer.

So, in the name of only having a short while to pull this off, Jesse slides himself into a booth the day after he walked out of the desert. 

He’s freshly showered and just off of a night on Ashe’s couch. He had spent fifteen minutes that morning arguing with Frankie about the need for a liquid diet past the soup from last night before, finally, he had just nabbed the keys to Ashe’s bike on the way out and drove straight to the diner, an itch of sand on his neck. 

“ ‘Morning, Commander,” He greets as he get comfortable. 

“Excuse me?” He rumbles in a way that more a threat than a question. 

Instead of answering he turns his body to face the waitress coming over, “How are you doing today, ma’am?” 

“I am good, darling. How are you? You missed your birthday. Is Joel coming in? Cause if he is, I gotta go warn the chef. He strolls in here like he owns the place one more time and Maury is going to take him out back for the trash collectors.” 

He gives a small laugh, “No, ma’am. He ain’t coming. We’re taking a break from each other, you know how he gets.” 

“Oh, and I suppose you are due for a little rebellion.” 

A large grin breaks across his face, “I think I earned just a little bit.” 

“Your normal good then, hun?” 

“Yes, ma’am, thank you.” 

“That’ll be right out,” She turns her attention to the other side of the table, “And anything else I can do for you, darling?” 

“No, thank you,” He responds, keen eyes staying fixed to Jesse. 

“I’ll be back soon then.” 

Jesse lets himself relax into the booth’s cushioning. They both regard each other in silence. A small smile genuinely holding on his face as he feels the future starting to click into place. 

The waitress comes back with a plate full of food and Jesse thanks her. He takes a bite from the hash browns before he says, “I wanna help you.” 

Gabe’s face reveals nothing, “You’re that kid who was throwing around potshots yesterday.” 

“One potshot and knowing who you are, you probably wished I threw it right between his eyes.” 

“I don’t know who the fuck-”

“Come on, Gabriel Reyes, we have other things to be discussing.” He goes still, but Jesse can see his arms tensing to grab at his holstered weapons. “I’m going to tell you where that warehouse is.” 

“Why would you do that?” He asks, seemingly giving up denial and allowing surprise to color his tone, but not relaxing. 

He tightens his lips and looks him straight in the eye, anger blazing underneath the false calm he’s wearing, “They’ve taken my whole life. I just want to be free. I just want to be done with this.” 

Reyes is quiet for a few moments, thinking over the new information, before he asks, “You know who I am, so tell me what’s your name, hijo?” 

He holds the other’s gaze and the words roll off his tongue because he knows his name, “Jesse McCree.”

* * *

“The desert give you all that crazy, McCree?” Ashe whispers out of the corner of her mouth, sidling up next to him while they walk into the house. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

She grabs his arm and gives them room to speak even as Gabriel shoots them a knowing look before continuing further inside. Her voice is a frustrated whisper, “I really would because what the fuck?!” 

“Look, I worked it out already. Reyes gets rid of them and we walk free.” 

“Goddamn it, Baby Boy, what the hell have you gotten us into?” 

“I got us a way out of this mess, Ashe, so don’t you fucking call me that.” 

She kisses her teeth, not really wanting to end this fight too quickly, “Overwatch is a bit of an atomic option. The fuck are they interested in us for?” 

“Might be,” Jesse spits back, “Something to do with the missing kids. This isn’t a decade ago, you can’t just raid orphanages like you use to.” He looks to where Gabriel was waiting on them in the kitchen, “Show Reyes the armory. I need to grab some stuff out of Morricone’s room that I don’t want him seeing and, for god’s sake, don’t tell him that bastard is my father.” 

“You don’t get to order me around,” She answers, but begins to walk again. 

Jesse makes to follow them, but as soon as Gabe’s attention is on Ashe’s back he moves up the stairs towards the bedrooms. 

The safe is easy to crack. It was old and more for aesthetic than security. 

Ashe and Gabe would find a more sophisticated, modern lock on the door downstairs securing his father’s collection of illegal weapons. His father thought you could always make money, but once you got caught with omnic weapons, it was all over. 

The omnic tech downstairs would be enough for Reyes to get a team approved and was a nice offering to show that Jesse meant business. 

This safe though was how Jesse made sure he could live when all this was said and done. 

He shoves five stacks on nicely packaged hundred-dollar bills into the duffle he brought from the car. This money would keep him alive if Reyes turned out to be as much of a bastard as his father had been.

When his hand goes back for another grab, it hits a leather casing instead. Pulling the item out, he finds a passport with his name on it. Sprawled out on the multicolored pages it says, _Joel Morricone, Junior._ His face is pictured right next to it as if to say _this is who you really are._ He hates it instantly. 

He really takes a look at the contents of the safe now. He finds his own birth certificate and a social security card. Both looking more recently printed than anything a hospital would have given out sixteen years ago, which makes sense considering he wasn’t born in the US. Must have been easy for Joel to get these documents living in the middle of an old warzone like they did. 

He throws them all in with the money, not wanting them, but not willing to give up the security in having the documents available. 

Jesse closes the safe not wanting to waste his precious minutes looking through any of Joel’s alias passports. Popping his head out of the window, he gives Frankie a little whistle to get his attention. He receives a thumbs up from the teenager in the truck’s driver’s seat before he returns to watching the road. 

He makes his way into his old room and begins to pile clothing into the duffle. He has been subsisting off of anything Ashe could threat out of people at the apartments, but he refuses to just give up his clothing, plus he needed something to bury his true intentions. 

Leaving the room a mess of open drawers as he goes, he stuffs as much into the duffle as he can. 

Gabe finds him switching the boots he had worn holes into with a newer pair. He’s holding the nicest phone Jesse has ever seen, probably using it to take pictures for evidence. He looks over the room once before just silently watching Jesse. 

A few seconds into the silence, he cracks, “Gives us a reason to be here if we get caught.” 

“Hm,” He acknowledges before asking simply, “You his kid?” 

“No,” He lies. 

Silence infects the room again. Jesse has lived and thrived in silence for years, but Gabe works in silence. His presence reaches out and tells you that this conversation isn’t over until Gabriel Reyes has had the last word. 

“There are things you’re not going to believe until you see that warehouse. He saw himself in me, so he took me. He thinks I’m his legacy. I’m not.” 

“Okay,” The man says, ending the conversation.

* * *

He’s sitting in the passenger side of Gabe’s truck when the doubts start to creep in. The first buildings of the most metropolitan part of the area start to shoot up around them and his skin is slowly beginning to crawl at the feeling of sticky sand that had gone unnoticed before. 

His eyes flicker over to Gabriel Reyes. The man has been grunting orders through his phone for the past fifteen minutes. 

Jesse takes a moment to study the deep lines of his face. The rough cuts, the barely-there traces of scars, the slightly off angle of his nose. 

This man has given him nothing. Why is he betting his future on him? 

Jesse rubs at his eye as his mind pulls up the visions from the desert. They come like a dream, blurry and slow to recall, whereas before they were crisp and easy. He tries to stop his hand from shaking as it moves away from his face, but worry is sinking into his skin, a frozen shock cascading through his body. 

He can’t put together a reason as to why he’s giving his future to someone again. He doesn’t know why and he can’t explain what Gabriel Reyes has done to earn this kind of trust. 

His body is stiff as they pull through a drive-thru and Gabe shoots him an odd look as they order. They pull a U-turn after they get their food, already working their way back to Deadlock’s shitty outpost. Talking in a moving car is just the safest option when anyone could be a rat. 

Reyes starts, “We’ll be on the ground ready to move in for nine o’clock. You sure everyone will be there?” 

“Yeah, Catherine runs a tight ship. Nine o’clock or nothing.” 

“Okay, this is how it will go down. You and your team leave a trail of these trackers.” He hands over a bag, which Jesse opens to find small black disks around five millimeters in diameter. “They’re specially made so they should be able to throw out a signal no matter what through a relay grid they create. Make sure all of you have these on somewhere visible.” A stack of four red bandanas gets pulled out of the middle console. “This is how you don’t get dead by accident. You got me?” 

Jesse hums out an acknowledgement, not sure his voice won’t come out as shaky as he feels. 

Gabe looks like he’s about to ask if he’s fine, but instead he eats a fry and says, “It’ll be quick. We’re not going to be coming in hot with bullets, not with the chance it could hit a child.” 

Jesse doesn’t know if the roundabout reassurance was helpful or not as he focused his attention on his burger. Probably not, especially since Jesse’s worries were more selfish in nature than being sick over the kids currently living in the warehouse. 

The older man seems to still see the hesitance, so he adds, “We’ll take you in with everyone else and once you’re processed, we’ll get a lawyer present to get a hardcopy of our deal down. How old are you by the way?” 

“Twenty-one,” He answers without a thought before he processes what he just heard. The other shoe is dropping, “You’re not taking me in!” 

Reyes is halfway through a starting crack about his made-up age when Jesse’s outburst cuts him off. Taking his attention off slowly opening roads for a second, he asks, “What the hell did you think was happening here?” 

“I’m not going anywhere with anyone after this!” He yells. Screw the desert, screw Reyes. “No one is taking me anywhere!” 

“McCree,” Reyes hisses at him, “I need you-“ 

His full body turns to face the driver’s seat, one hand clutching the headrest and the other the front console. “No! Fuck you, I gave you everything you needed. You are not putting me in handcuffs, I am not going to prison.” 

The resolve burning in his voice and eyes makes Gabe hesitate. The man visibly back down and says, “Okay, we’ll figure something else out.” 

“Yeah, you better,” He replies, throwing himself back into his seat. His hand finds the control to roll down the window, so his next breath is a lungful of desert dust that warms through his body. Gabe chokes on the dust and gives him a nasty look before rolling up the window from his side and turning on the child lock.

* * *

Checking over his shoulder one last time to make sure Ashe has already pulled out, he gives the bungie cords a few taps to check the hold on his duffle. The bag is strapped to the back of a Harley he palmed the keys off of on the way out of Morricone’s house and he had handed off the trackers and bandanas along with Reyes’s instructions to Ashe while kind of implying he’d be following them a bit later. 

He doesn’t feel bad though as he flips the kickstand upwards and revs the engine. 

He refuses to fall back into the same situation he has just worked himself out of. 

The bike’s tires protest when he takes it off road, but he feels an awful kind of thrill running through him at the thought of destroying one of Morricone’s antiques. The roads in and out of town are hot right now with Overwatch and Deadlock activity, so relying on blind instinct to pull him through the pitch-black desert is the only way he’s getting out of this area alive and unchained. 

A comfortable weight settles against his back, thick arms wrapping around his abdomen and lips slipping next to his ear, “You need to turn around.” 

He jerks the motorcycle hard as a spikey-looking plant pops right into his path, but without pause he replies, “Not happening, Sweetheart.” 

The breath warms the skin of his ear, “You’ll never meet me, Cowboy, unless you turn around.” 

An ache goes through his heart at the thought of losing whatever it is this man will be to him, but he can still feel the intense fear of having nothing once again weighing on his shoulders. 

“Then, I guess that’s that, darling.” 

The comfort of another body is then gone, disappearing as fast as it came. The wind is cold on his uncovered hands and face, but the feeling is grounding. 

A twist of an air current whips at his face throwing dust into his eyes. When he manages to open them, he has to pull hard on his break to stop before he can slam the bike into a boy around his age. 

In the stark headlights, Jesse sees him bleeding. Varying long cuts slowly slicing apart his body the longer he stares. Blood comes dripping out of the boy’s mouth in slow molasses chunks as he says, “I need you to save me, Jesse. I’ll die if you aren’t there.” 

Jesse doesn’t know this boy though. He’s not a resident of the warehouse. 

So, he presses his lips into a line, flicks his wrist for the gas, and sighs at the apparition, “Can’t save everyone.” 

Before he can get his feet to fully push off the ground, he finds himself staring as the boy becomes something else. The blood that has slowly been spreading across his clothes and falling in large drops onto the sand congeals into a mass of crimson. The blood overtakes the form of the boy. 

For a moment, he is looking at the sun. The next, he’s staring at his father.

Joel Morricone is picking his way through the house with keen eyes. 

As he begins to move up the stairs, a voice calls out, “Boss, we’re late! The big boss is gonna be mad.” 

“Let me worry about that, bud. Something ain’t right here,” He throws over his shoulder as he makes his way up the stairs. 

The most obvious thing he sees is the room Jesse had left a mess, drawers sprawled open and furniture overturned. He stares at the open door for a moment before turning to his own bedroom. It takes a good thirty seconds to open the safe, but Jesse can tell Morricone knew it was empty before the door swung open. 

His father’s face turns feral, his eyes bleeding into crimson. He stalks his way out of his house, yelling out to his team, “We need to get to base right now!” 

Jesse sees the car’s clock flash _9:01_ and hears Joel snarl, “Junior,” as the scene transforms back into the desert. 

He’s turning the Harley in the direction of the warehouse before he can even truly think through what he’s doing. 

The image haunting his mind might not be a vision from the desert, but it feels as realistic as the ones he had just seen. He’s replaced the dying Asian boy with Gabe in his head. He can’t seem to shake the thought of bullets ripping Gabriel Reyes apart from his back forward, his eyes shocked and blank as his body crumbles. 

It wasn’t easy to shrug off the two people the desert had shown him before, but he knew Gabe. Jefe wasn’t an unsure future-A figment that still might not be real-He was a real breathing human who Jesse had entrusted to end his nightmare and who had given him that in an instant.

In the back of his mind, his plan, after everything calmed down, was to just go find Reyes. 

Morricone’s snarling face flashes in his mind and he knows in his heart that if he doesn’t go, there won’t be a future where Jesse and Gabe reunite. 

As he approaches the warehouse, there is a barrier of trucks surrounding it, headlights reflecting blinding light in the desert night. 

The bike isn’t fully stopped before he’s allowing it to crash into the sand and sprinting full force towards where he knows Morricone and his team are. 

The loud scene covers the sound of his mad dash. Boots crushing plant life and grinding down into loose rocks. He slides to a halt when he catches a glimpse of the back of Morricone’s head and can pinpoint the other five members of his team. They are slowly sneaking their way across the darkened sand towards the lights. 

He can feel himself burning. 

The heat of the desert seeping into every part of his body before, in an instant, it all pulls together in his right eye. 

A crimson light falls on his head and the words slid out of his mouth as he pulls Peacekeeper from her holster, “It’s high noon.”

Red eyes find his own as six bullets fly out of the revolver. 

He remembers his own words to Ashe, _Something worse is going to happen to him._

Something worse did happen to him. 

_Soon, I’ll eat him for you, Jesse._

Joel Morricone’s head jerks back as the bullet bites right between his eyes. 

Dead by his own power, by his own legacy. 

Watching the man fall, blood quickly soaking into the sand around him, was relieving in the way he always hoped. A weight that had been pulling at his heart for years was suddenly gone.

He had been starving for so long. 

Every bit of energy drains out of Jesse, knees crumbling from under him. 

His breath comes out in large huffs as he tries to keep his eyes from shutting. Between one blink and the next, he finds himself surrounded by black-clad soldiers and curses himself for stuffing the stupid bandana into his back pocket. 

“Reyes,” He lets out between pulls of air. 

They inch closer creating a tighter barrier around him. 

His young voice cracks as he raises the volume and desperately calls out, “Reyes!” 

His vision has more spots of black than anything and his ears are ringing a deafening tune. He holds back acid in his throat as he’s hauled upwards. 

A warm arm wraps around him to support his weight and he finds Reyes’s face staring down with concerned eyes. “I saved your life.” 

“Shut up,” Reyes says to him urgently. 

“Why are they pointing guns at me?” He realizes he doesn’t have Peacekeeper, “Why did they take my gun? I saved your life.” 

“Stop talking. You’re digging yourself into a hole,” He furiously whispers. 

Gabe puts him down, placing him in a seated position against the truck he’s spent a majority of the past few days in. He can barely register that the door is being opened, but feels it when the larger man tugs him into the passenger seat. 

“Give me your hands.” 

He does without much thought as his head hits the headrest. He thinks he’s asleep, but startles awake once the click of metal fully processes. His eyes fly open and his hands yank back as he finds himself cuffed to the handle of the door, closed into the car by Gabe. 

“I saved your life,” He snarls as Gabe slips into the driver’s seat, trying to work up the energy to fight harder against the bonds. 

“You killed six people in less than a second. Be glad you’re here and not in the transport van.” 

They stare each other down, but it is obvious that whatever burst of energy Jesse had is draining as his eyes take longer to reopen after each blink. 

“Reyes,” He starts, fear coloring his tone. 

“I’ll figure this out, okay? Trust me.” 

With his tongue heavy in his mouth, his words come out in Spanish. 

He hasn’t slipped into the language since he was ten and Morricone smacked the back of his head with an English textbook so hard he nursed a lump for weeks. _“My bike- My stuff- I left it on the ground in the brush. Please, I don’t-“ have much, have anything except that_ , He wants to finish, but his tongue feels like it’s glued to the top of his mouth, his eyes no longer even opening. 

_“I’ll get it. Just get some sleep, hijo.”_

_”Okay, Jefe,”_ He murmurs behind closed eyes and thinks he feels a warm hand touch the top of his head before his senses fizzle out completely.

* * *

The silence that follows only ends when Jesse pulls into the gas station. 

He parks at pump and rubs tiredly at his eyes as he gets out. The other two emerge from the car, starkly at odds in the brightly lit up sand and ambiguously old station in the comfier clothing they are wearing. 

Jesse finds Hanzo staring at him over the roof of the car. The weariness that has overwhelmed the air stretches miles between them. 

Hanzo breaks the gaze and says, “I’m getting coffee and something to eat.” 

He doesn’t offer anything to either Gabe nor Jesse before he walks off. 

Jesse just watches the man walk towards the store before he drags out his wallet to pay the machine. Turning his attention to the instructions, he fiddles with the buttons with slow practiced motions. 

As he turns to actually fill the tank, he feels the car keys snatched out of his hands. Gabe’s blank face fills his vision, but he can’t find it in himself to do more than nod and continue with his task. 

“Why are we here, Jesse?” 

_Because it’s time,_ The voice in his ear whispers, louder now that it was in LA, finally more than an itch at his neck or static he could feel more than hear through the rumble of the car. 

“Desert will tell me where I need to be,” He says instead. 

“McCree, I don’t understand what’s happening here. You’ve had years to share your sob story. Why now?” The older man lets frustration edge into his voice, “Why are you telling me this now?” 

It was a loaded question. A question full of other questions: Why didn’t you tell me you killed your father? Why didn’t you tell me you turned back for me? Why didn’t you tell me you killed your father to save my life?

_Because it’s time,_ He hears again, an insistent reminder of his purpose. 

He remembers being handcuffed to that table and Gabe walking in with a swagger and an incomprehensible contract. “You gave me so much.” 

The anger he expected finally rears to the front of Gabe’s oscillating mood, “Then why did you lie to me? Your age, your family- everything about you is a goddamn lie.” 

Emotion is finally sparking back into his numb body. The car ride had drained every fiber of his being, but Gabe’s words took a flint to his skin as he processes them. 

Jesse McCree can’t be a lie. 

Without Jesse McCree, he’s dirt. 

Jesse McCree can’t be a lie. 

The carefully modeled English, his Stetson, Peacekeeper, the birthdate on his license, the life he created from nothing but pure want-pure hunger. 

It’s all real. 

He’s real. 

He can’t be nothing, but a lie. 

He can’t be _nothing_ again. 

“Oh, cry me river, Reyes. I worked like a dog for you for decades. I came back in time to save your life. All you’ve done for me is not believe me when I say there’s trouble. I don’t know what I saw in you, Reyes, because I don’t fucking see it anymore.”

And maybe that’s the problem. He’s surrounded by people wearing the bodies of his family. 

Familiar faces hiding unfamiliar people inside them. 

He watches as Gabe flinches back before recovering the inch with a fight burning in his eyes. The low burn in his voice growls out, “I made you, niño.” 

“Didn’t you hear? I killed the last person who thought they _made_ me. I might as well do myself the favor. I wouldn’t have to spend all my time cleaning up the messes you leave.” 

Gabe looks livid and Jesse braces himself as he anticipates the force of the push back, but SEP strength never fades and he ends up sprawled out on his ass, hat thrown several feet away. 

A thick exhale comes from Gabe, the man throwing on his Blackwatch personality, “Take a fucking lap, McCree, and think about who the hell you’re spewing your fake macho bullshit at.” 

He makes himself hold the anger in his eyes for a long moment before standing and moving towards his hat. His hands and jeans are covered in white desert dust that he doesn’t even think about brushing off. Dipping low, his hand scoops up his hat and fixes it to his head in a smooth movement that has the dirt staining his hat before it trails off in the wind. 

He makes towards the large restroom sign on the store’s outside corner, dipping out of what he knows is Reyes’s line of sight before continuing straight past the doorway. 

_Because it’s time,_ He thinks, thoughts falling into the comforting pull of the desert echoes.

* * *

Hanzo isn’t thinking about the lies Jesse McCree has woven into a life. He has known since he met him that the cowboy was a tarantula spinning silk that the less observant just thought was a normal web. 

Though fascinated by every facet of the man who has the nicest thick drawl, he is reaching the end of his patience with Jesse McCree and the worlds he speaks into existence. Hanzo has let himself be caught too many times in the beautiful web, only to be left in the cold when the apparition of his other self disappeared from Jesse’s eyes. 

So, he watches as Reyes gets punched with every truth, the lonesome realization that the person he trusted the most was a desert illusion. Dirt brought to life with expectations and hope. He watches as each reveal piles a heavy weight on Reyes’s shoulders. His nationality, his age, his name, his blood-grains of sand slowly becoming insurmountable dunes.

He sees the anger settling and knows that’s exactly what Jesse McCree wants.

Hanzo’s interest is on the other parts of the story. The crimson eyes, the slowly possessing heat, the visions of himself and his brother. 

He offhandedly mentions five months in the desert-Hanzo hears a spirit stealing time. 

He said the desert ate his father-Hanzo wonders when it will eat Jesse. 

Jesse says that he knows the desert- Hanzo knows that nature is a fickle being. 

He knows Reyes is trapped already. Jesse has worked the man into a very specific type of anger that only he can cause. 

As he finishes fixing the last of three coffees into a tray, he wonders what game Jesse is playing on him. He is definitely mostly interested in the spirit of the desert, but maybe the trap is more than that. More than just keeping him interested. 

He thinks over the last ten hours and hundreds of miles and finds that he has to acknowledge the anger building inside him towards Jesse, similar maybe to Reyes’s. The little parts in McCree’s story where his other self appears, if only as a spirit trick, had made his skin boil. 

He is strong enough to admit that he’s mad. He’s not quite sure at who though. 

At this Jesse McCree for coming in and stealing the Jesse who was supposed to love him or at the other Hanzo for taking the heart of the cowboy so thoroughly even the person who resembles him the closest cannot steal it away. 

Placing the tray of coffees next to the pile of food he had left in front of the register, he reaches into his pockets for his wallet. 

It's empty. 

Of course, it was empty. He is still wearing his pajamas. He holds back a weary sigh, but tells the cashier, “I’ll be back in a moment. My companion has my wallet.” 

They supposedly have a few hours left on this journey, so there is enough time yet to pull apart the mechanisms that Jesse is trying to weave together. He just has to be sneakier than the spider. 

Walking out the door, his eyes are temporarily blinded by the intense reflection of the sun on the sand. Blinking slowly, he marches his way towards the car. 

His ears pick up Reyes’s gruff voice saying, “Look, we’ll be back in time even if I have to requisition a goddamn plane.” 

Getting close enough to see into the car, he looks for Jesse, the only one of them that definitely has a wallet on them, but finds the interior lacking the cowboy. 

Reyes pulls the phone away from his mouth and asks, “What are you looking for, Shimada?” 

“Jesse. I need his credit card,” Hanzo answers simply. 

“Went to the bathroom.” 

“No, he didn’t.” 

Reyes just raises an eyebrow, challenging him to back up his claim or go fuck himself. 

Hanzo says, “You need a key for the bathroom. The cashier has it. He never came inside.” 

As the words work their way out of his mouth, both men slowly swing their heads over to the large expanse of desert behind the rest stop. 

They both understand at once. 

Whatever Jesse was looking for- whatever the desert told him he needed, it isn’t two hours away. It’s here. 

The world-weaver has done it once again. 

“Jack, I’m going to have to call you back.”

* * *

A relief resonates through his body as the deep itch that has been increasingly bugging him for weeks fades away. In its place, a deep comforting warmth toasts his skin. 

He walks, allowing himself to follow the red sun. His legs ache nicely as they stretch out from the long car ride. 

Every piece of this last part of his journey feels perfect. 

The sun grows larger in his vision and sand kicks up around him. 

The further he walks the more relieved he feels. 

The constant low thrum of worry that has haunted him all year as the date of Overwatch’s fall approaches is gone. His mind clears. He has nothing to worry about because Overwatch doesn’t need him anymore. 

No one needs him anymore. 

He gets to be a peace. 

_It’s time,_ He thinks, _I get to rest now._

He’s finally here. He reaches a hand out to the sun, thick warmth spreading on to it, staining his flesh red. He closes his eyes as he feels the jelly like substance begins to climb his arm, welcoming the feeling and everything it entailed. 

His hand is lost in a pleasant static that he knows he’ll get to fall completely into. 

He hears a rumbling behind him.

A distance feeling that something is wrong begins to nudge in the back of his head and he tries to pry open his eyes or look behind him, but finds he cannot move an inch. Fight or flight begins a reaction, the feeling of panic sparking faster through him as he pushes at the warm fuzziness that has taken residence in his head. 

“Ryuuga wagateki wo kurau!” 

A bullet speeds by his ear and he barely gets his eyes open in time to see Hanzo’s dragons crash into the red orb. 

The substance on his arm breaks apart as he falls backwards on to his ass. 

As he tries to push himself up, he realizes it took his left arm with it. 

The bone of his shoulder is only exposed for only a moment as blood wells up now that the substance has been separated from his body. His right hand clenches over it, trying to hold his flesh together. 

Hanzo’s dragons are disappearing faster than they should be, but now Jesse see can the sun for what it truly is. 

Blood. 

A thick and crimson gelatinous orb that is constantly dripping and recongealing. 

Scrambling to stand, an arm grabs the collar of his shirt, hauling him into the car. 

Gabe spins the vehicle around, the force slamming the passenger door closed. He only barely saves his ankles from severe bruising by instinct. Jesse feels his skin beginning to crawl again as Hanzo keeps one arm wrapped around his body and the other aiming a spare gun he kept in the trunk out the open window at the sun. 

The blood seeping through his fingers feels the same as what had overwhelmed his left arm. He only stops himself from releasing it in horror and instinctual fright at the chance of also losing his right hand because Hanzo pushes him off his lap and opens the sun roof to take aim at the spirit behind them. 

His thoughts feel like a light switch. They flicker from begging to return to the warm comfort of the desert to dawning horror and back. 

In a moment of dawning horror, he wonders when was the last time he was fully aware. 

Definitely not since hitting American soil last week, but has it been years-has it been since that day when he was fifteen and left in the desert-two lifetimes ago?

The next moment he’s trying to hook his elbow into the door handle, sure that he can get out of the car. 

Gabe digs his hand into his bloody shoulder around where Hanzo is balanced on the center console. The pain shocks through him, flicking his thoughts back out of pleasant fuzziness with agony. 

“Wha-I-“ He tries to say around panting breathes. 

Gabe angrily cuts, “Not now.” 

He feels another wave of warmth. 

Overwatch doesn’t need him. He doesn’t even want to stay with this Overwatch, they aren’t his family, not like before. 

A stream of cold wind whips at his face from the open window as Hanzo jostles him from his perch. They’re getting closer to the road. 

They just need to get out of the desert. 

He’s just going to keep hurting Hanzo. He’s not who this archer needs. He’s just a copy that has replaced the person who’s supposed to be here. 

The car rumbles brutally, throwing him around the seat. He holds his shoulder tighter and thinks about the days he used to spend on the LuméirCo trains. 

The comfort of the desert starts to infect his mind once again, but instead he mutters in Spanish, _“Fuck you, nothing can kill me.”_

He digs his nails into the bloody stub, saying it again, _“Fuck you, nothing can kill me.”_

Whipping his head out the window, his throat lets out a guttural scream at the blistering sand that is trailing behind them, ribbons of crimson haunting their path, _”Fuck you, nothing can kill me!”_

The car gives a large rattle as they make it on to the road. Jesse pulls himself fully inside and looks at Gabe. He has his undivided concentration on the road, but as Jesse gives him a nod, he knows it’s over.

Gabe taps on Hanzo’s legs, silently telling the other it was safe. He slides down from his perch and precariously balances himself half in the back seat with his legs trailing between Jesse and Gabe in case he needed to go back up. 

The three of them pant silently before Jesse says, “Sidenote: I did not lose my arm like this last time.” 

“Last time?” Gabe asks, a threat edging the question. 

At the same time, Hanzo says, “McCree, we’re breaking up.” 

He almost says, _We were never together,_ but the blood lose is making him slow and, really, he has spent enough time being the asshole in this relationship. 

“You need to deal with your issues.” 

He has enough time to reply, “Fair.” Then he’s asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got two small fics to coming to wrap up the loose ends of this series.
> 
> Happy New Year, y'all! I'm super proud I finished this!


End file.
